Making the world a better place in :30

Capital deployment isn’t just about creating new business or turning a profit. It’s also the key to eradicating poverty. To building smarter, greener cities. To empowering women to create jobs and wealth in their communities. To giving poor families access to clean drinking water, healthcare, and education opportunities that can improve their lives.

Capital is what drives responsible growth.

Through innovative partnerships, Bank of America is putting capital to work to make the world a better place. To find out how, watch the videos below.

Lending to Women Pays Dividends

What happens when women business owners get loans and funding to expand their businesses? They have a brighter financial future, they create jobs, and they produce new, innovative products and services.

Textile designer Stevie Howell used a loan funded by Bank of America and the Tory Burch Foundation to hire her first employee, freeing her up to spend more time designing and marketing her product. That’s good for her business, good for her family and good business for the community lender that invested in her.

How Can Big Capital Solve Big Problems?

One in nine people in the world lack access to clean water, and a child dies from a water-related disease every 90 seconds. Philanthropic donations are critical, but fall short of providing access to clean water for nearly a billion people. Private capital can fill in the funding gaps and help bring clean water to those who desperately need it.

With the help of a $5 million loan from Bank of America, Water.org created a $50 million investment fund to lend small sums to poor families to install clean water and sanitation systems. The fund is expected to help 4.6 million people in South Asia drink from the tap without fear.

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How Can Big Capital Solve Big Problems?

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A $50 million social impact investment fund from water.org is helping millions of people get access to clean water.

Bank of America contributed the first $5 million to the fund.

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Anne Finucane: You can bring in philanthropic dollars, development dollars, private equity dollars, bank dollars, and those in combination can address a problem in a much larger way.

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Anne M. Finucane, Vice Chairman, Bank of America

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Over 20 years ago, Gary White, cofounder of Water.org, came to Bank of America to open a checking account.

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AF: We've done it with water, water.org.—helping a philanthropic effort scale to a larger business.

AF: When we apply the same kind skill we have for other businesses, that’s where it really makes a difference.

Bright Lights, Smart City

The city of angels uses a lot of electricity. In fact, switching 209,000 streetlights to more energy-efficient LED bulbs is saving the city of Los Angeles $10 million a year, reducing energy usage by 63 percent and cutting carbon emissions by nearly 50,000 metric tons a year.

Los Angeles was able to make its streetlights more energy-efficient thanks to a 10-year, $105.5 million loan from Bank of America. The money was part of the bank’s $500 million green bond, a financing program that funds low-carbon and sustainable business projects.

What does it take to build strong neighborhoods?

For neighborhoods to thrive, they often need capital to support local businesses and community resources. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) can fill in the gaps when access to capital is missing.

CDFIs are non-profit lenders that use capital to build or improve crucial community services, from day care centers to hospitals to low-income housing. Find out how Bank of America works with CDFIs to bring needed infrastructure to underserved neighborhoods.

Hope for the Mississippi Delta

The poverty rate in the Mississippi Delta is twice that of the United States. Lacking a healthy tax base, infrastructure such as schools and health clinics are often absent or in poor condition, making it difficult for residents to get basic services.

In 2016, Bank of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture created Uplift America, a $500 million lending program to help finance infrastructure projects in impoverished rural areas. Hope Enterprise Corp. in Jackson, Mississippi, a community development financial institution (CDFI), will use funds from Uplift America to help build out the critical services the Delta needs to thrive.

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Through Uplift America, Bank of America is providing a $100 million guarantee for rural development, enabling the USDA to lend $500 million to community lenders such as Hope Credit Union of Jackson, Mississippi.

VO of Bill Bynum: With the financing that we provide, we seek to address critical gaps in education, health care, jobs, basic community infrastructure that help these communities thrive and become more economically mobile.

BB: There’s never been a time that I can think of where half a billion dollars is available to invest in the most distressed counties of the country. So we were really excited that Bank of America was willing to step up and make a 100 million dollar commitment to help us move this project forward.

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